Michael Chong’s Reform Act will finally be debated in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Even assuming it is passed overwhelmingly and with government support, what will its impact be? Perhaps little or none.

C.E.S. Franks’ 1987 book TheParliament of Canada observes, “The reform of Parliament is not simply a technical matter.” Chong’s bill is highly technical; it proposes to shift the balance of power in the House of Commons through various amendments of the Parliament of Canada Act and Elections Act. Chong is not claiming to change the world through a few amendments, but the grand title of Reform Act makes clear he is trying to make significant changes to how Parliament works. But can Parliament be reformed (assuming it needs reforming) by technical means at all?

A basic question in social science is structure versus agency: are outcomes shaped primarily by independent actions of individuals (agency), or channeled by larger rules, norms and social and economic forces (structure) that mere individuals cannot easily challenge? A related idea is institutionalism, which has several variants but focuses on how institutional rules and structures shape choices, preferences and behaviour.

Debates on parliamentary reform, while rarely framed explicitly as such, revolve around these concepts. Can dissatisfaction and ambivalence about Parliament be addressed by changing the rules, to shift underlying behaviour and attitudes? Or can parliamentarians and voters choose to change things of their own accord? As party whips are fond of saying, every parliamentary vote is in some ways a “free vote” where MPs can choose whether or not to toe the party line. Similarly, if a caucus wants to rebel against its leader it can (and has) done so of its own accord, even without the benefit of Chong’s proposed mechanisms.

It is worth looking at two past attempts at “technical” reform in the House of Commons. First is the McGrath committee of the mid 1980s. Among its accepted recommendations were direct election of the Speaker, greater freedom and resources for standing committees (continuing the Lefebvre reforms of a few years earlier) and more chances for private members’ business. When the reforms were implemented, chair Jim McGrath was quoted in a moment of exuberance: ”This place won’t be the same a year from now.” A throwaway line, but symbolic of the hope that technical change could transform Parliament.

The McGrath reforms were significant, but the Commons remained much the same. The key tensions of party discipline, the ambivalence of committees, and the general question of the role of backbenchers remained.

Technical reforms only become real reforms when people take up the new opportunities. The most notable immediate winner from the McGrath reforms was the standing committee on finance chaired by Don Blenkarn, which generally worked across party lines and had real influence on policy. At its heart was the independent minded Blenkarn, a longtime backbencher who took advantage of the new reforms to pilot his committee into new waters – an agent exploiting the opportunities of the structural/institutional changes. But while there have been other successful and important committees since, Blenkarn’s remains exceptional, rather than the beginning of a new era. The technical changes were not enough amid the other pressures of government priorities, party discipline, and MPs’ own career aspirations.

A second example of technical change is the November 2002 House vote to elect committee chairs by secret ballot. At the time it was big news. The reform was meant to reduce control of committees by letting them more easily reject the government’s choice for chair, presumably leading to more Blenkarns. But this “reform” meant and still means almost nothing. Secret ballot or not, governments have little difficulty making sure their choice still becomes chair. This technical change meant nothing without larger structural shifts in attitudes and the larger context of committees, and so agents did not exploit it.

There is good reason to support giving MPs more options to exercise agency short of open rebellion, and Chong is the credible person to lead the way. But the history of parliamentary reform is full of changes that never went anywhere because they were only technical, and agents did not or could not use them to challenge the larger structural forces. To make a difference, technical reforms must be accompanied by attitudinal changes as well.

Jonathan Malloy is the chair of the department of political science at Carleton University.

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